This isn’t quite what Gareth Southgate had in mind when he urged English footballers to broaden their horizons and consider moving abroad.
Southgate was worried that too many English players were settling for a well-paid existence on the fringes of a Premier League team when there were more competitive, invigorating and enlightening experiences to be found overseas. Consider France, Germany, Italy and Spain, he said three years ago (and, indeed, three years before that in 2017), never imagining that his vice-captain would be following a gold rush to the Saudi Pro League.
A different style of football? Definitely. A different way of life? Certainly. But Jordan Henderson is prepared to give up the Liverpool captaincy for life at the seventh-best team in Saudi Arabia on a contract which, at around £700,000 a week, is not so much comfortable as mind-boggling.
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It is a move that will have serious repercussions for Liverpool — and which, as Caoimhe O’Neill wrote so eloquently, has caused dismay within the LGBTQI+ community, where Henderson had previously been the most prominent ally in the men’s game — but it is also one that will set alarm bells ringing in English football.
A high-profile English player was always likely to be enticed to Saudi Arabia sooner or later, but few people would have imagined it would be one with as much to lose, both reputationally and professionally, as Henderson.
As much as Cristiano Ronaldo or Karim Benzema? In some respects, more.
Ronaldo is 38 and, after his acrimonious departure from Manchester United, was a free agent with no realistic options in Europe. Benzema, 35, was out of contract at Real Madrid, albeit having been offered a lucrative extension.
Henderson is 33 and in decline but he still had another two years on his contract at Liverpool. Unlike Roberto Firmino, who departed Anfield as a hero in May, he is slipping out of the side door.
In isolation, Henderson’s impending departure is of little consequence to the Premier League or to English football as a whole. Likewise the departures of Fabinho and Firmino from Liverpool, Edouard Mendy, Kalidou Koulibaly and N’Golo Kante from Chelsea, Riyad Mahrez from Manchester City (assuming that deal is completed), Alex Telles from Manchester United and Ruben Neves from Wolverhampton Wanderers. Of those nine players, only Fabinho (just) and Neves are the right side of 30.
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It is more what this particular deal represents. Not just a Liverpool and England player, but captain of his club and vice-captain of his national team. Not just a high-profile player, but one who has used his profile and his platform for good, speaking up against homophobia, discrimination and injustice. Little wonder that so many are shocked or upset by his defection to Saudi Arabia, whose human rights record attracts widespread condemnation.
Henderson is hugely respected within the game. When the Premier League and PFA required leadership over on-pitch and off-pitch issues on all those Zoom calls during the Covid-19 pandemic, it was the Liverpool man who emerged as “captain of the captains”. Southgate had more than Henderson’s age in mind when he described him as a “tribal elder” within the England squad.
And there will be players in that squad who see him joining Kante, Benzema, Ronaldo et al, earning sums that are mind-blowing even by Premier League standards, and deciding they fancy a bit of that too, whatever the cost to their careers.
At the very least, Henderson has jeopardised his England career with Euro 2024 on the horizon. Southgate has not closed the door on his future involvement — indeed, as The Athletic has reported, the national manager has assured him he will be considered for future squads — but even more than Harry Maguire’s vastly reduced role at Manchester United last season, Henderson’s move to Al Ettifaq threatens to test his loyalty.
Ronaldo has kept his place in the Portugal team for now — with coach Roberto Martinez saying, in that unique way of his, that the player’s move to Al Nassr is actually a positive thing for the national team — but Henderson, respectfully, is not Ronaldo.
And Al Ettifaq are not Al Nassr. Ronaldo will be playing in front of big crowds, alongside Marcelo Brozovic, Seko Fofana and perhaps Sadio Mane, challenging for trophies (including the AFC Champions League if they can get through a play-off).
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By contrast, Henderson is joining a team that finished seventh last season, with an average attendance of 5,561, and whose big signing last summer, Brazilian forward Vitinho, scored three goals. Even before signing Ronaldo and Brozovic, Al Nassr had seven players at last year’s World Cup. Al Hilal had 12. Al Ettifaq had none.
As for Henderson’s former Liverpool team-mate Fabinho, Al Ittihad won the Saudi Pro League last season and, having added Kante, Benzema and former Celtic forward Jota to their squad, will be among the favourites for that title and for the AFC Champions League. Their average attendance last season was 40,453. For the final game, when they lifted the league title, they were watched by a crowd of 59,892. Again, quite different from what lies in store for Henderson in Dammam.
Football-wise, Henderson has settled for what looks, unimaginably to some of those who know him well, like the ultimate comfort zone. He never seemed the type, given that he has spent his entire career striving, pushing himself and his team-mates. And that is what will trouble Southgate, just as it will trouble many others in English football.
If Henderson can be turned, who might be next?
For all Southgate’s open-mindedness, English football has historically had a difficult relationship with some of those who have dared to ply their trade elsewhere. Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle were exiled while producing perhaps the best form of their career in France in the late 1980s and early 1990s respectively; Steve McManaman drifted out of England contention while winning trophies for Real Madrid.
But moving to Saudi Arabia is a different matter. And rather than Hoddle, Waddle or McMamaman (or indeed Jermain Defoe, who missed out on the 2014 World Cup squad after swapping Tottenham Hotspur for Toronto FC, but was later recalled at the age of 34 after joining Sunderland) perhaps the closest historical precedent means going back more than seven decades to the cases of Neil Franklin, Charlie Mitten and George Mountford.
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Franklin, an imperious defender for Stoke City and England, and Mitten, a flamboyant winger for Manchester United, were among the stars of the Football League in 1950 when, frustrated by the pay constraints in England, they left for Colombian club Independiente Santa Fe. It was a particular shock in the case of Franklin, who was turning his back on selection for the upcoming World Cup for a deal reportedly worth more than £60 per week, free accommodation and a signing-on fee anywhere between £2,000 and £3,400.
It all sounds meagre 73 years on, but at a time when footballers in England were subject to a maximum wage of £12 a week, those sums were as jaw-dropping as the Saudi money now.
On arrival in Colombia, Franklin was said to have turned to his compatriots and told them, “We’ll live finer than any footballers in the world”. But the “rebels”, as those who left for Santa Fe were portrayed, became outcasts — partly because the new Colombian league was not recognised by FIFA and partly because… well, the English game has tended to take a dim view of any club, league or national association that threatens to disrupt the long-established order.
Predictably enough, what had been called “El Dorado” proved to be fool’s gold. Franklin returned after three months and was banned for four months by the Football Association and suspended indefinitely by Stoke, who ultimately sold him to Hull City. He never played for England again. Mitten stayed out in Colombia longer, but was banned for six months by the FA and was shunned by United manager Matt Busby, who sold him to Fulham. He never overcame the stigma of being branded “the Bogota Bandit”.
Then there is the case of Don Revie, who resigned as England manager in 1977 to sign a four-year contract worth £340,000 — tax-free — to take charge of the United Arab Emirates national team. One columnist argued that Revie deserved to be “castrated”.
Absurdly, the FA charged Revie with bringing the game into disrepute and banned him for 10 years. Even though the former Leeds United manager got the ban overturned in the High Court, he never worked in English football again.
Henderson will not be subjected to that treatment; the FA’s self-awareness has grown as their authority has been eroded.
Beyond that, how could the FA or the Premier League possibly object to a player’s career choice when, rather than tackle the scourge of sportswashing, they have allowed the phenomenon to grow in English football?
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If it isn’t the Premier League waving through takeovers by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the United Arab Emirates’ deputy prime minister, it’s the FA signing a memorandum of understanding with Qatar and suddenly dropping its public opposition to FIFA’s selection of World Cup host for 2022 — usually coinciding with the UK government signing a deal to signal a huge inward investment from and increased cooperation with the state in question.
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But individuals can certainly take a dim view of Henderson’s decision. More than any other player moving to Saudi Arabia this summer, he will stand accused of betraying principles and values he has claimed to hold dear. More than any of the other big-name recruits, he will stand accused of opting out of elite football altogether, not just moving to a lesser league but to a lesser team within that league.
And that will surely trouble Southgate, whatever assurances he may have offered Henderson in private. Not only the concern that one of his senior players is taking such a drop in status with a tournament looming, but the message that this move sends out: that a senior international player, captain of one of the biggest clubs in world football, acclaimed and lauded as a model pro, can be persuaded to turn his back on English football, with all of the riches and profile it offers, to join a Saudi club whose average attendance last season was eclipsed by 18 of the 24 clubs in League One.
This generation of English footballers has never known a situation where there is more money to be earned elsewhere.
Other leagues have experienced the disappointment of seeing their leading players depart for life on the fringes of a Premier League team. It is a culture shock for English football to see one of its leading players jump at the invitation, however lucrative, to join one of the also-rans in a league to which he would never previously have given a second thought.
Yes, there was the short-lived Chinese Super League phenomenon, which Wayne Rooney briefly considered when he was approaching the end at Manchester United, but for the most part English players were felt to be off-limits at that time. It was all driven by certain agents and none of the big English agencies were given any cause to try to muscle in.
But that has changed with Al Ettifaq’s appointment of Steven Gerrard and an offer that Henderson, who succeeded him as Liverpool captain eight years ago, evidently feels he cannot refuse.
It signals that England’s leading players are, in LinkedIn parlance, open to work — just as long as they offer riches beyond even their wildest dreams.
(Top photo: Carl Recine – Pool/Getty Images)
